The White Queen (62 page)

“My dear, how ever would you get there?”

“I have my money chest, I have my guard. I could bribe a ship to take me. If I went
down to the docks at London now, I could get away. Or Greenwich. Or I could ride to
Dover or Southampton . . .”

He smiles at me and I remember they call him “the fox” for his ability to survive,
to double back, to escape the hounds. “Yes, indeed, all that might have been possible;
but I am sorry to tell you, I am nominated as your jailer, and I cannot let you escape
me. King Richard has decided that all your lands and your wealth will be mine, signed
over to me, despite our marriage contract.
Everything you owned as a girl is mine; everything you owned as a Tudor is mine; everything
you gained from your marriage to Stafford is now mine; everything you inherited from
your mother is mine. My men are in your chambers now collecting your jewels, your
papers, and your money chest. Your men are already under arrest, and your women are
locked in their rooms. Your tenants and your affinity will learn you cannot summon
them; they are all mine.”

I gasp. For a moment, I cannot speak, I just look at him. “You have robbed me? You
have taken this chance to betray me?”

“You are to live at the house at Woking, my house now; you are not to leave the grounds.
You will be served by my people—your own servants will be turned away. You will see
neither ladies-in-waiting, servants, nor your confessor. You will meet with no one
and send no messages.”

I can hardly grasp the depth and breadth of his betrayal. He has taken everything
from me. “It is you who betrayed me to Richard!” I fling at him. “You who betrayed
the whole plot. It is you, with an eye to my fortune, who led me on to do this and
now profit from my destruction. You told the Duke of Norfolk to go down to Guildford
and suppress the rebellion in Hampshire. You told Richard to beware of the Duke of
Buckingham. You told him that the queen was rising against him and I with her!”

He shakes his head. “No. I am not your enemy, Margaret. I have served you well as
your husband. No one else could have saved you from the traitor’s death that you deserve.
This is the best deal I could get for you. I have saved you from the Tower, from the
scaffold. I have saved your lands from sequestration—he could have taken them outright.
I have saved you to live in my house, as my wife, in safety. And I am still placed
at the heart of things, where we can learn of his plans against your son. Richard
will seek to have Tudor killed now; he will send spies with orders to murder Henry.
You have signed your son’s death warrant with your failure. Only I can save him. You
should be grateful to me.”

I cannot think, I cannot think through this mixture of threats and promises. “Henry?”

“Richard will not stop until he is dead. Only I can save him.”

“I am to be your prisoner?”

He nods. “And I am to have your fortune. It is nothing between us, Margaret. Think
of the safety of your son.”

“You will let me warn Henry of his danger?”

He rises to his feet. “Of course. You can write to him as you wish. But all your letters
are to come through me; they will be carried by my men. I have to give the appearance
of controlling you completely.”

“The appearance?” I repeat. “If I know you at all, you will give the appearance of
being on both sides.”

He smiles in genuine amusement. “Always.”

Read on for an exclusive excerpt from

THE WHITE PRINCESS

Coming from Touchstone in July 2013

I wish I could stop dreaming. I wish to God I could stop dreaming.

I am so tired; all I want to do is sleep. I want to sleep all the day, from dawn until
twilight that every evening comes a little earlier and a little more drearily. In
the daytime, all I think about is sleeping. But in the night all I do is try to stay
awake.

I go to his quiet shuttered rooms to look at the candle as it gutters in the golden
candlestick, burning slowly through the marked hours, though he will never see light
again. The servants take a taper to a fresh candle every day at noon; each hour burns
slowly away, although time means nothing to him now. Time is quite lost to him in
his eternal darkness, in his eternal timelessness, though it leans so heavily on me.
All day long I wait for the slow rolling in of the gray evening and the mournful tolling
of the Compline bell, when I can go to the chapel and pray for his soul, though he
will never again hear my whispers, nor the quiet chanting of the priests.

Then I can go to bed. But when I get to bed I dare not sleep because I cannot bear
the dreams that come. I dream of him. Over and over again I dream of him.

All day I keep my face smiling like a mask, smiling, smiling, my teeth bared, my eyes
bright, my skin like strained parchment,
paper-thin. I keep my voice clear and mellow, I speak words that have no meaning,
and sometimes, when required, I even sing. At night I fall into my bed as if I were
drowning in deep water, as if I were sinking below the depths, as if the water were
possessing me, taking me like a mermaid, and for a moment I feel a deep relief as
if, submerged in water, my grief can drain away, as if it were the river Lethe and
the currents can bring forgetfulness and wash me into the cave of sleep; but then
the dreams come.

I don’t dream of his death—it would be the worst of nightmares to see him go down
fighting. But I never dream of the battle, I don’t see his final charge into the very
heart of Henry Tudor’s guard. I don’t see him hacking his way through. I don’t see
Thomas Stanley’s army sweep down and bury him under their hooves, as he is thrown
from his horse, his sword arm failing, going down under a merciless cavalry charge,
shouting: “Treason! Treason! Treason!” I don’t see William Stanley raise his crown
and put it on another man’s head.

I don’t dream any of this, and I thank God for that mercy at least. These are my constant
daytime thoughts that I cannot escape. These are bloody daytime reveries that fill
my mind while I walk and talk lightly of the unseasonal heat, of the dryness of the
ground, of the poor harvest this year. But my dreams at night are more painful, far
more painful than this, for then
I dream that I am in his arms and he is waking me with a kiss. I dream that we are
walking in a garden, planning our future. I dream that I am pregnant with his child,
my rounded belly under his warm hand, and he is smiling, delighted, and I am promising
him that we will have a son, the son that he needs, a son for York, a son for England,
a son for the two of us. “We’ll call him Arthur,” he says. “We’ll call him Arthur,
like Arthur of Camelot, we’ll call him Arthur for England.”

The pain, when I wake to find that I have been dreaming again, seems to get worse
every day. I wish to God I could stop dreaming.

My dearest daughter Elizabeth,

My heart and prayers are with you, dear child; but now, of all the times in your life,
you must act the part of the queen that you were born to be.

The new king, Henry Tudor, commands you to come to me at the Palace of Westminster
in London and you are to bring your sisters and cousins. Note this: he has not denied
his betrothal to you. I expect it to go ahead.

I know this is not what you hoped for, my dear; but Richard is dead, and that part
of your life is over. Henry is the victor and our task now is to make you his wife
and Queen of England.

You will obey me in one other thing also: you will smile and look joyful as a bride
coming to her betrothed. A princess does not share her grief with all the world. You
were born a princess and you are the heir to a long line of courageous women. Lift
up your chin and smile, my dear. I am waiting for you, and I will be smiling too.

Your loving mother

Elizabeth R

Dowager Queen of England

I read this letter with some care, for my mother has never been a straightforward
woman and any word from her is always freighted with levels of meaning. I can imagine
her thrilling at another chance at the throne of England. She is an indomitable woman;
I have seen her brought very low, but never, even when she was widowed, even when
nearly mad with grief, have I seen her humbled.

I understand at once her orders to look happy, to forget that the man I love is dead
and tumbled into an unmarked grave, to forge the future of my family by hammering
myself into marriage
with his enemy.
Henry Tudor has come to England, having spent his whole life in waiting, and he has
won his battle, defeated the rightful king, my lover Richard, and now I am, like England
itself, part of the spoils of war. If Richard had won at Bosworth—and who would ever
have dreamed that he would not?—I would have been his queen and his loving wife. But
he went down under the swords of traitors, the very men who mustered and swore to
fight for him; and instead I am to marry Henry and the glorious sixteen months when
I was Richard’s lover, all but queen of his court, and he was the heart of my heart,
will be forgotten. Indeed, I had better hope that they are forgotten. I have to forget
them myself.

I read my mother’s letter, standing under the archway of the gatehouse of the great
castle of Sheriff Hutton, and I turn and walk into the hall, where a fire is burning
in the central stone hearth, the air warm and hazy with woodsmoke. I crumple the single
page into a ball and thrust it into the heart of the glowing logs, and watch it burn.
Any mention of my love for Richard and his promises to me must be destroyed like this.
And I must hide other secrets too, one especially. I was raised as a talkative princess
in an open court rich with intellectual inquiry, where anything could be thought,
said, and written; but in the years since my father’s death, I have learned the secretive
skills of a spy.

My eyes are filling with tears from the smoke of the fire, but I know that there is
no point in weeping. I rub my face and go to find the children in the big chamber
at the top of the west tower that serves as their schoolroom and playroom. My sixteen-year-old
sister Cecily has been singing with them this morning, and I can hear their voices
and the rhythmic thud of the tabor as I climb the stone stairs. When I push open the
door, they break off and demand that I listen to a round they have composed. My ten-year-old
sister Anne has been taught by the best masters since she was a baby, our twelve-year-old
cousin Margaret can hold a tune, and her ten-year-old brother Edward has a clear
soprano as sweet as a flute. I listen and then clap my hands in applause. “And now,
I have news for you.”

Edward Warwick, Margaret’s little brother, lifts his heavy head from his slate. “Not
for me?” he asks forlornly. “Not news for Teddy?”

“Yes, for you too, and for your sister Maggie, and Cecily and Anne. News for all of
you. As you know, Henry Tudor has won the battle and is to be the new King of England.”

These are royal children; their faces are glum, but they are too well trained to say
one word of regret for their fallen uncle Richard. Instead, they wait for what will
come next.

“The new King Henry is going to be a good king to his loyal people,” I say, despising
myself as I parrot the words that Sir Robert Willoughby said to me as he gave me my
mother’s letter. “And he has summoned all of us children of the House of York to London.”

“But he’ll be king,” Cecily says flatly. “He’s going to be king.”

“Of course he’ll be king! Who else?” I stumble over the question I have inadvertently
posed. “Him, of course. Anyway, he has won the crown. And he will give us back our
good name and recognize us as princesses of York.”

Cecily makes a sulky face. In the last weeks before Richard the king rode out to battle,
he ordered her to be married to Ralph Scrope, a next-to-nobody, to make sure that
Henry Tudor could not claim her as a second choice of bride, after me. Cecily, like
me, is a princess of York, and so marriage to either of us gives a man a claim to
the throne. The shine was taken off me when gossip said that I was Richard’s lover,
and then Richard demeaned Cecily too by condemning her to a lowly marriage. She claims
now that it was never consummated, now she says that she does not regard it, that
Mother will have it annulled; but presumably she is Lady Scrope, the wife of a defeated
Yorkist, and when we are restored to our royal titles and become princesses again,
she will have to retain his name and her humiliation, even if no one knows where Ralph
Scrope is today.